A ghastly good time

Elizabeth LargeSun Restaurant Critic

Dig out that old "Werewolves of London" cassette and get ready to party on with the ghouls and ghosts this Halloween.

You'll be right in step with the rest of America. Halloween is the third most popular time for adults to throw a party -- right behind New Year's Eveand Super Bowl Sunday, according to the National Retail Federation.

"Adults take [Halloween parties] oh so much more seriously than kids ever would or ever could," says Tracy Bloom of Creative Parties in Bethesda. "Sowe've had quite some fun with it."

In the past clients have asked her for a real coffin in their living room, with a "corpse" that sat up periodically. She's decorated a dinner table witha chafing dish that contained a live head, revealed when a guest lifted the lid. (Someone sat under the table with his head poking up through a hole.)

Even if you don't have a professional event planner to set things up for you and wouldn't go quite that far if you did, you can have a blast throwing a Halloween bash -- without spending a lot of money.

Most important, say the party people, is to know your audience and plan accordingly. Are your friends creative and a little crazy? Or will you have ahard time convincing them to wear a costume, let alone participate in silly parlor games? Figuring that out will help you decide what sort of Halloweenparty you want to throw: a free-for-all fright night, the wilder and less structured the better, or a get-together with a definite theme.

Come as you were"Think of a theme to focus your guests," says Lesley Bannatyne, author of "Halloween: An American Holiday, An American History" (Pelican, 1998), who iscurrently working on a how-to book on Halloween for adults. She suggests a "come as you were" party or one with an Edgar Allan Poe theme; or have all the guests dress up as vampires or aliens or mummies. If you're inviting married folks, you might have them come as famous couples like Antony and Cleopatra or Jackie and John Kennedy.

One of the hottest Halloween themes of the moment, says Wendy Moyle, president of the Internet party site ShindigZ.com, is retro '60s and '70s.Guests who have too much dignity to dress as Dracula, complete with fangs and fake blood, may be more willing to come in simple costumes as love children,hippies or Brady Bunch clones. Tie-dye, disco balls and peace symbols can be worked into the otherwise ghoulish party decorations.

A thoughtful host, says Moyle, will have a few props to offer guests at the door if they don't come in a costume -- a funny hat, a mask, a bandanna -- so they won't feel out of place when everyone else is dressed up.

But whatever your theme (or lack thereof), be sure to have a camera near the entrance so you can snap a picture of your guests in all their dressed-upglory.

With Halloween only a couple of weeks away, you'll probably want to invite your friends by phone or e-mail rather than posted invitations. But be sure to tell them costumes are required.

"They give grown-ups a chance to step outside themselves, outside of the boundaries," says Moyle. "They can take on another persona."

Step into my parlorHalloween décor, almost unknown a decade ago beyond ajack-o'-lantern or two, has become a significant part of a $5 billion Halloween industry, according to the retail trade group The Halloween Association. That means you can find plenty of seasonal decorations for your party in the stores right now. You can spend as little as a few cents for a creepy plastic spider to put in the bathroom soap dish or spider confetti tosprinkle on the table, to as much as $159.99 for a fog machine at Valley View Farms in Cockeysville. (A gallon of fog machine liquid costs $39.99.)

But you can also create some pretty spooky effects from items you havearound the house.

She suggests getting dead flowers from florists for your vases and placing them around the house. Throw sheets over your living room furniture as if thehouse hasn't been lived in recently. Buy inexpensive cotton spider webs; to make them look more realistic, stretch them out into long strands. Hang orange and black balloons everywhere around the house.

No Halloween party is complete without a haunted house (even if only a haunted room) or a fortune-telling corner (have a friend dress up as a gypsyand read palms). If you have a yard, make a haunted graveyard with several guests' names on tombstones cut out of Styrofoam. Use fresh soil or mulch (ona black plastic bag for easy cleanup) to create the look of a freshly dug grave. Have an old garden glove stuffed with paper coming up out of it.

Here are more décor suggestions from party planners:Play a classic black-and-white horror film like the 1931 "Dracula" for spooky background. Pick one that contributes atmosphere without drawing guests in to watch, says Bannatyne.

If you can, light the entire party area with jack-o'-lanterns. Put them in unexpected places, such as in a bird cage.

Go for the Gothic look with groupings of votive candles.

Colored bulbs are cheap but effective. A black-light bulb will make the blueing agent in newly washed fabrics glow spookily.

Eerie sound effects are important. Have a tape deck with a recording of aheartbeat hidden under the sofa. Buy an inexpensive tape of scary sound effects at a discount store and play it for background music.

Place ghoulish fake limbs in unexpected places, suggests Bannatyne. Forinstance, you could stuff striped socks, add black shoes, and you'd have witch's legs coming out of the oven.

Paint dead branches black and cover them with faux cobwebs. Stand them in a corner.

Dry ice is troublesome, but it gives a great short-term effect.

Put containers on the mantel labeled "eye of newt" and "Tom's thumbs."

Name your poisonThe best Halloween parties take place after dark, of course, so you won't have to serve dinner unless you want to. If you do, event planners recommendnormal seasonal food; people may shy away from anything too creepy. (You could serve black bean soup in a hollowed-out pumpkin, for instance.) You can add atmosphere by giving the food spooky names on a written menu.

Anything made with apples, pumpkins or nuts seems appropriate; and, of course, there should be candy -- this is Halloween. For a quick and easy partymix, Sadler suggests combining Spanish peanuts (with the skins on) and candy corn.

"It's more in the display than any specific food," says Moyle. She likes having dry ice in the punch bowl, for instance. (Use a tea ball or small bowlwithin the bowl to hold the ice so it doesn't get in anyone's punch cup.) If you don't want to serve punch, Bloody Marys and strawberry daiquiris arealcoholic drink possibilities. "Anything red." And, of course, you'll want to have cranberry juice as a nonalcoholic alternative.

If you have someone passing hors d'oeuvre trays, Bloom suggests offering a little surprise on every third one: pass around a tray of gummy worms,perhaps, or a tray of plastic spider rings after the canapés and before the shrimp.

Fun and gamesYour guests are probably expecting a sort of glorified cocktail party in costume, but Halloween is the time to get a little wild and crazy. The bestway to loosen things up is to have parlor games and other activities to break the ice.

"It depends on the crowd, but getting people to do things gets them out of the norm," says Moyle. "It livens things up."

A contest for the best costume is a natural, but have lots of prizes: for the scariest, the dumbest, the funniest, the most creative. Again, you have to know your audience; but if your friends are good sports, they'll bob for apples, play charades or do the limbo to the "Monster Mash."

Sadler has had the best luck at her Halloween parties with scavenger hunts.

She divides the party into groups of three or four, and makes sure each group has a video camera. The groups are sent out to complete several tasks, andwhichever one gets back to the party first wins the prize. When everyone returns, the group watches the videos together.

One instruction, for instance, was to stand around a horse and sing "Old McDonald." One creative group found a statue in the city park; another used akiddie ride in front of a discount store.